Dogs in NYC

Cynthia Wang, Yihui Wang, Olivia Huang

May 2020

Introduction

NYC is frequently ranked as one of the most dog-firendly cities in the United States. In this project, we are aiming to answer the following questions through various visualizations.

Where are the dogs in New York City?
What are people’s preferences of dogs?
Who are getting more dogs?
How are people naming their dogs?

Data

NYC Dog Licensing Dataset has information about registered dog licenses from 2014 to 2018 in NYC. Information such as dogs’ names, breeds, and birth years are also included in this dataset.

uszipcode API is a Zip Code search engine that provides demographic information such as income, housing, and education. In this project, we extracted income information using this API.

Let’s locate the dogs!

Across boroughs

This choropleth map shows the number of new dog license registrations over time. The overall distribution across boroughs didn’t change much during 2014-2018. Compared to other boroughs, the number of new dogs increased in Queens and Brooklyn in 2017 and 2018. While the number of new dogs is consistently the highest in Manhattan, it is the lowest in Staten Island.

By Zip Code

This map shows the distribution of new dogs over different Zip Codes and the most popular breed(s) in that region. Check out the dogs in your neighborhood!

Who are geting more dogs?

We collected the income information from different Zip Codes. The scatterplot shows the relationship between median household income and the number of new registered dogs. It seems like households whose median income is from 75k - 100k are getting more dogs over these years.

What are people naming their dogs?

Like hoomans, our four-leg friends have their popular name trends! The following word “paws” show that the top popular names New Yorkers give their dogs haven’t changed a lot over the past 30 years. Evidently, Max has been one of the most popular name in since 1998. Luna and Lola have been popular girl names for the past 20 years. New Yorkers generally have been maintaining a simple style when it comes to dog names. Many of the most popular dog names contain less than 5 letters.

In 1998

In 2008

In 2018

2018 by borough

There is a small degree of variation among the most popular names in each borough. A few names, including Max, Luna, Bella, are the most beloved names across NYC.

The Bronx, Manhattan, Queens

Brooklyn, Staten Island